he monkey, had gone to the store
of Mr. Raymond, not far away.

I need not tell you about the practice for the play, as it took so long
for each boy and girl to learn his or her part, and how to come on and
go off the stage at the right time. At the proper place I'll tell you
all about the play, but just now I'll say that for several days there
was hard practice with Mr. Treadwell, Mart, and Lucile to help, or
"coach," as it is called, the children.

"Do you think we'll be ready by Christmas?" asked Bunny one day.

"Oh, surely," answered the actor. It was planned to have the play, "Down
on the Farm," given Christmas afternoon, and the money was to go to the
Home for the Blind in Bellemere, and not the Red Cross.

"Oh, it's snowing again!" cried Bunny Brown, as he ran into the house
one afternoon, when he and Sue came home from school. "May we take our
sleds out, Mother?"

"Yes, I think so," answered Mrs. Brown.

"Where's Lucile?" asked Sue. "Can't she come and sleigh ride with us?"

"She and Mart are out in the pony stable," answered Sue's mother. "Your
father let Mart come home early from the office, and he and his sister
have been out in the barn ever since. I can't say what they're doing.
Maybe you'd better go and see."

"Come on, Sue!" cried Bunny Brown. "Maybe they're practicing some new
acts for the play."

But when Bunny and his sister entered the stable where the Shetland pony
was kept, a sound of hammering was heard.

"Are you here, Mart?" called Bunny.

"Yes," was the answer. "Come and see what Lucile and I have made for you
and Sue!"

Bunny and his sister hurried into the room where the little pony cart
stood, and there they saw something that made them open their eyes in
delight.

CHAPTER XIII

"THEY'RE GONE"

The pony cart, which generally stood in the middle of the barn floor
next to the stall of Toby, the little Shetland, had been rolled back out
of the way, and in its place stood what first seemed to Sue and Bunny to
be a large box. But when they looked a second time, they saw that the
box was fastened on a large sled--larger than either of their small
ones.

"What are you makin'?" asked Sue.

"Oh, something to give you and Bunny a pony ride," answered Mart.

"Oh, it's a pony sled, isn't it?" cried Bunny.

"Well, yes, something like that," was the answer, given with a smile.
"There wasn't much to do down at the dock to-day, so your father let me
off early. On my way home